


Revival

by Long_Time_QT



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 20:55:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4073602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Long_Time_QT/pseuds/Long_Time_QT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper and Mabel Pines find themselves wandering through a forest with no memory of how they got there. As the events that lead them there slowly reveal themselves, they must join two other lost souls who have their own dark history with these woods. Darkness surrounds them, and the twins wonder if they'll ever make it home.</p><p>It's been a year since the incident in The Unknown. Wirt and his brother Greg have been living peacefully until they awaken to find themselves thrown back into the woods. How did they get there? The answer seems to lie with two lost children who seem just as mysterious as the name Mystery Twins suggests. But can they be trusted?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revival

**Author's Note:**

> So I like Gravity Falls and I like Over the Garden Wall. Then I thought... crossover.  
> The opening lyrics (only songfic type part, I promise!) can be sung to the tune of the Over the Garden Wall theme.

 

_Three in the woods_

_Two sent through to sleep_

_One who was lost is revived_

 

_Our songs long forgotten_

_Their melodies will ring_

_And shadows will rise_

_As darkness descends_

_If we make it home_

_Could we make amends?_

 

_Oh how our waking dreams_

_Sway us to believe_

_That even_

_Gravity_

_Falls_

Somewhere lies a place long untouched by the sands of time, where secrets hide within lore. Where mysteries cloud the minds of lost souls, until truth shines through the darkened passages of the wood… of The Unknown.

 

***

Swaying branches. Golden sunlight. Autumn leaves. The scene was alight with the energy only a forest could have in the light on a setting sun. All was calm. Peaceful. Quiet.

“STOMPING ON LEAVES! STOMPING ON LEAVES! Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch! STOMPING ON LEAVES! STOMPING ON LEAVES! Stomp—“

“Wait, Mabel, hold on,” Dipper stopped, Mabel doing the same a few paces ahead of him, and looked around at the unfamiliar path they were walking.

“What’s up, bro?”

Dipper shook his head. Something was wrong, very wrong. He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that they weren’t supposed to be… where were they?

“Do you,” he began awkwardly, “I mean, do you know where we are?”

“Um,” Mabel looked around seemingly unaffected by the strange wrongness that surrounded them, “Is that a trick question? Because all I see is forest.”

“Yea, but…“ the wood closed around them, blocking the evening light from their skin, and a distinct uneasiness grew within the pit of Dipper’s stomach. A shadow moved in his periphery but he was too slow to catch it, instead only seeing the seemingly endless wood that enveloped them.

“Look at the trees!” he pointed out, desperate for her to see what he saw, “They’re not like the conifers we’re used to, and everything looks muted? Like your sweater! It looks paler than it did last time you wore it.”

Mabel looked down at her starry navy blue sweater. It was indeed a few shades lighter than it once was, but Mabel shrugged unaffectedly.

“The color probably faded in the sun or the laundry! Seriously Dipper, I think you’ve gone crazy paranoid again.”

“Then explain how you can stomp on leaves, _autumn leaves,_ if it’s summer.”

Mabel looked around through the same uncertain, disquieted eyes as her brother. From the looming twisted trees above, to the well-worn path underfoot, and lastly to her brother a few paces away.

“You have something, there.”

"Right?” Dipper exclaimed, “We have to figure out how we got here. When we got here. Why—“

“No, I mean you have something there!” Mabel pointed to Dipper’s right hand, where he finally noticed the rolled up paper he’d apparently been holding the whole time. _What the heck, where did it come from?_ He carefully unrolled what appeared to be a torn out page from a book. A very old book.

“What the…”

“Do you think it’s from the journal?”

“Maybe… I mean it looks like- oh no,” Dipper began to panic as he dropped the pages to pat his body down frantically, “The journal. I- we- I don’t have the journal!” This was bad. This was very, very bad. Who knew what they would come across in this part of the forest? Maybe there was something out there. Maybe something brought them here. Maybe they were trapped in this unknown wood for the rest of their lives. Maybe—

“Dipper! DIPPER! It’s okay! I’ve got you.” Mabel’s voice broke through the haze and Dipper was shaken back into reality. Literally shaken.

“Mabel, I’m gonna throw up if you don’t stop.”

“Oh, sorry bro,” she said as she let her hands fall from his shoulders, “You okay now?”

“Yea, I, uh, no. No, but I can focus.”

“Good,” Mabel smiled cheerfully, “I know if anyone can get us back, it’s you! Mystery Twins?” She held her fist out and raised her brows assuringly.

Dipper smiled and returned the fist-bump, “Mystery Twins.”

Mabel absolutely beamed as she picked up the page he’d dropped in his anxiety and handed it to him. First thing they needed to do was figure out where they were, then they could focus on the why and the how then, hopefully, how to get back. Maybe the page contained some clue. If it’d been torn from the journal, there had to be a reason. Which begged the question, where was the rest of the journal?

“So, let’s see. Now, uh... huh. Well this is weird, it looks like they’re from the journal, but I don’t remember reading it.”

“Maybe it’s from one of the other journals?” Mabel suggested.

“Yea, maybe,” he laid the page face up on the dirt, “It’s got some kind of weird markings on it, like some kind of pictogram. Wait, I think I may have seen this before. Mabel, do you have a pen?”

“BLAM!” Mabel shoved a sparkly pink pen in her brother’s face, “It’s made of gel ink and stardust.”

“Obvious marketing ploy, definitely not made of stardust,” Dipper took the pen anyway. He drew a few grids and got to work. After what seemed like forever, especially with Mabel asking if he was done every five minutes, he finally cried in triumph.

“Mabel! I think I’ve solved it!”

“Awesome bro!” Mabel said, rushing back over from where she’d been drawing shirt patterns in the dirt, “I knew you could do it! What does it say?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Huh?”

“At first I thought it was a regular pigpen cipher—“

Mabel snorted, “Pigpen. That sounds like a Waddles cipher!”

“Right, well, at first I thought it was a pig—“

“ _Waaaadles_.”

Dipper sighed in defeat, “Fine, at first I thought it was a Waddles cipher, but I ended up with just gibberish. Then I remembered a variation of the cipher from that videogame Hitman’s Denomination 2½, and I also ended up with gibberish.”

“Not really seeing how you solved it there…”

“I’m getting to it. Then I realized there must be a code within the code, so I went back to the first one and tried an Atbash cipher on the decoded pi- Waddles cipher, and so far it’s working. Look!”

Mabel aloud read over Dipper’s shoulder as he determinedly finished decoding the message, “’Two are the trees who carry their reveries as wayward souls wandering through the darkness. Lost, time is longer than it seems when the light returns, echoing long-forgotten stories of the wood.’ Wow, this is really lame poetry. Either that or a bunch of song lyrics mashed together with no context by some loser trying to be deep.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of riddle,” Dipper read over the message again, muttering the words as he did so, “This is insane! What is any of this supposed to mean?”

A gentle wind blew through the leaves as the autumn sun deepened its descent. Somewhere, a lantern was lit.


End file.
